Ali Ataie – The Prophet Muhammad in the Bible
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Well, hello. Again, welcome to blogging theology.
Tonight, we have back a very distinguished guest,
professor
Ali Atay. You are most welcome back on
blogging theology, sir.
Thank you so much, Paul. It's an honor
to be on blogging theology with you again.
I appreciate it.
As a great pleasure. And, just for those
few people who may not be familiar with,
doctor Atay's,
skill set, if that's the right word, He
is a scholar of biblical hermeneutics
with,
excel. I'm reading here from the notes on
there's a CUNA College,
website which describes his qualifications,
and which are particularly relevant to tonight's program.
So he's a scholar of biblical hermeneutics
with specialties in sacred languages, comparative theology,
comparative literature.
And at Zaytuna College, which is in California,
the USA,
doctor Atay has taught Arabic,
creedal theology,
the sciences of the Quran, introduction
to the Quran,
and the ancient texts,
such as the Torah, which we're gonna be
looking at today.
And he's a native Persian speaker
and, can read and write Arabic,
Hebrew, and Greek. Now this is particularly relevant
given the subject today, which will be Mohammed
the prophet Mohammed in the Bible, particular reference
to the last book of the Torah in
the Jewish Bible, Deuteronomy.
Is a famous verse in the 18th chapter
and the 18th verse. This has often been,
alluded to by Muslims as a prediction
of the prophet Mohammed.
Now you will not be surprised to hear
this has not gone uncontested,
particularly by Christian
missionaries who say, no. It doesn't. We we
say, oh, yes. It does.
So but,
the doctor Ali Atay is, because of his
knowledge of the languages of the Bible, particularly
Hebrew and Greek,
because the Bible comes to us in 2
languages, the the original Hebrew
and the Greek translation, which is quoted in
the New Testament. Here, he can read and
write both. So he is uniquely qualified,
to speak, on this. So it's very much
his platform today. I would do virtually, hopefully,
no waffling at all,
because this is gonna be a,
probably a quite intensive,
sophisticated,
delivery,
I understand. So be prepared for a high
level,
teaching experience.
I will seek to, at a future time,
to create segments from,
this program,
more bite size.
So the length of it, if it puts
you off, you can come back and perhaps
see,
smaller segments in the future as well. But,
perhaps I'll just end it there and hand
it over to doctor Ali Atai to introduce
the subject, for himself and to take us
through this fascinating subject. So over to you,
sir.
Thank you.
Thank you again.
Paul, your channel is so incredibly important.
I sincerely pray that people continue to
support you and your work.
I think it's indicative,
of our state as a species that
if someone like little Nas X has, you
know, 15,000,000
subscribers, that's what people are thinking about, I
guess.
But but there's no greater discipline than theology.
Okay? The study of God, the study of
ultimate
reality.
Okay? Thoreau said,
don't read the times. Read the eternities,
which I I love that quote. So thank
you for your great work that you do.
May Allah
continue to, increase you,
in all good things. So Deuteronomy 1818. So
this is this is a topic
with with with several moving parts. Okay. It's
a bit complicated.
It's a bit sophisticated.
So I encourage the listeners to maybe take
notes,
to review this session,
if necessary,
and most importantly, to do further research. Okay?
So this is just the beginning. I'm just
gonna lay out the groundwork.
Okay. So first of all, what does the
Quran say about the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi
wasallam in the bible? Okay. So the Quran
says, and this is in the 7th Surah
of the Quran
verse 157,
Surah Al Araf 157.
It begins in the Arabic. Those who follow
the messenger, an nabi'al ummi,
okay, the unlettered or gentile prophet.
Okay? Because means gentile as well.
Whom they find
written of.
Is the, the passive participle of kettaba, to
write, whom they find written of or described,
in the Torah and gospel that are with
them.
Okay. So the Torah and gospel that the
Jews and Christians
have, respectively,
contain writings that describe the prophet
Muhammad as a messenger
and as an, unlettered and or gentile, that
is to say,
non Israelite
prophet.
Now in the Islamic tradition,
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is
the prophet of the Abrahamic restoration
and universal messenger. And like his ancestor Abraham,
he was neither a Jew nor a Christian,
but the foremost
submitter unto God and the quintessential
monotheist.
Now just to remind the viewers, I said
in the previous discussion that it seems to
me that the Quran uses the terms Torah
and gospel
in sort of a twofold sense, right, in
the sense of,
a prototype, sort of the original pristine revelations
given to Moses and Jesus, peace be upon
them, but also in the sense of,
existing texts in the possessions
of Jews and Christians that contain something of
the true teachings
of the original Torah and gospel. And these
are, of course, you know, the Pentateuch and
the Fourfold Gospel
of the New Testament, respectively. And, of course,
the dominant opinion
is that the Quran intimates,
that the Torah and gospel
suffered a degree of textual,
as well as exegetical,
corruption or alteration
over time.
Right? They they heard the word of God
then changed it.
So this is why the Quran is called
Al Furqan.
Al Furkan means
the criterion.
Okay? So
that which, you know, separates the wheat from
the chaff as it were with respect to
the previous
scriptures.
So the Jews and Christians have, for all
intents and purposes, the Torah and the gospel,
they're just not in their original form. So
today, as you said, I'm going to focus,
on the Torah, not the gospel because we're
talking about the book of Deuteronomy.
Okay. So
according to a general consensus of historians,
the book of Deuteronomy
was actually written
in the 8th or 7th century
before the common era.
Okay? So that's about 800 years after Moses,
peace be upon him. So keep that in
mind. I'll come back to that. That's really
important. But what does what does Deuteronomy 1818
actually say? So let's let's read it in
Hebrew
and then translate it as literally as possible.
So it says
so God is speaking to Moses here. A
prophet
I will raise up for them
from the midst of their brethren
like you.
And I will put my words in his
mouth,
and he will speak to them everything that
I command him.
Okay? Now there are 2 questions that arise
here.
Number 1, given the fact that according to
historians,
these words were first written in the 8th
century before the common era, does this tradition
of a prophet like Moses truly go back
to Moses,
peace be upon him, or did the authors
of Deuteronomy invent this idea in the 8th
century? The honest answer is that we don't
know,
but but let's assume for our purposes today
that, yes, yes, it does. Let's say that
the tradition of a prophet like Moses
is a true what's known as pre compositional
tradition.
It's a pre compositional
tradition. In other words,
a tradition that predates the writing of Deuteronomy.
Okay? A preliterary
tradition. This is the term that was coined
by Hermann Gunkel, preliterary tradition, a tradition that
was perhaps passed orally,
until it, was written down by the author
or really authors
of Deuteronomy.
So let us take the position then
that Moses truly spoke of a prophet to
come in the future who would be like
him. Now the second question arises.
Given our first position, was Moses
describing the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him?
The answer is, again, we don't know. We
we cannot say definitively.
Now one can certainly make the argument
that the Quran seems to indicate this.
Okay? And I direct the viewers to 70
chapter 73
verse 15 of the Quran.
That indeed we sent unto you
a messenger
to be a witness against you, kama, just
as, and kama, this is the same particle
that's used in 18 18 Deuteronomy,
just as we sent
to pharaoh, a messenger.
So the prophet Moses, peace be upon him,
and the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him,
are, homogenized as it were, in this verse.
Another verse that seems to indicate this is
chapter 46 verse 10
of the Quran. This is called Surat Al
Aqaf
verse 10. 4610.
Say, have you considered
if it is from God and you disbelieve
in it, meaning the Quran,
or some of the exegetes say the pronoun
could refer to the prophet, and you disbelieve
in him
while a witness from the children of Israel
bore witness to 1 like him
to 1 like him and has believed. So
Imam al Qurtubi,
who,
was the great Spanish
scholar,
who knew the scriptures of the Jews and
Christians, he said that the witness from the
children of Israel mentioned in this verse in
the Quran, 4610,
was none other than, Moses, peace be upon
him, who bore witness to one like him,
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and
thus believed in the prophet.
So so the Quran seems to say that
Deuteronomy 1818 is a true
pre compositional tradition that goes back to Moses
and describes the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him. However, according to the vast majority of
Muslim scholars,
as Muslims,
we don't insist that any text of the
Bible
is absolutely
true in its exact wording.
Right? Many of the Bible's concepts are obviously
true. Some of its teachings are true. Certain
traditions are true. But specific texts, we don't
know for certain.
Okay? Christians, by the way, cannot be as,
discerning as Muslims. Right? Christians
have essentially cornered themselves. They must accept
the text of the Hebrew Bible,
from Genesis to Malachi,
basically hook, line, and sinker.
Okay? They must find
the deity of Christ in the Torah
because this is what the Johann and Jesus
said, yeah, Moses wrote about me, and the
Johann and Jesus, according to Christians,
claimed to be God.
Okay? So that's been their project for 2000
years.
And quite often,
Christian missionaries
and apologists, they falsify
the text of the Tanakh to achieve their
purposes.
And I'll just give you 2 quick examples,
very famous examples. So there are many examples
of this,
and many of the viewers, are familiar with
these, but it's worth mentioning. In in Christian
Bibles,
Psalm 2 verse 12
Psalm 2 verse 12 in Christian Bibles
reads like this. Kiss the sun,
right, lest he be angry.
Kiss the sun, s o n, capital s
o n, lest he be angry. That's King
James, that's NIV, etcetera, etcetera.
Okay?
The Hebrew rendered as kiss the sun
is nashkubar.
It says nashkubar.
The problem is that the verb
can mean either
to kiss or to arm oneself.
Okay? So it's a homonym.
Like in Psalm 789, it says it says
the children of Ephraim
being armed and carrying bows, and the verb
is nasak.
Secondly, the Psalms are in Hebrew.
Okay?
Bar in Hebrew means purity.
In Aramaic, it means sun.
But this is Hebrew.
Okay? So the verse actually says, arm yourselves
with purity,
lest he, God, be angry. So here,
the, the Christian translators want us to imagine
that David
suddenly decided to write a single word in
Aramaic,
and we hear 1,000 before the common era
no less. I don't know how he did
that, but I but I think I think
the Christian translators know better.
Another example, the famous example, right, the the
famous royal Psalm,
Psalm 110, just the first verse, the
For David, a Psalm, the Lord said to
my Lord,
both both words translated Lord,
both capital.
Right? And they say, look, there are 2
lords. You see? The father, God, the father
said to God, the son.
Here's here's the problem. In Hebrew, the first
word translated as lord is the Shemham of
Horash. Right? The it's known as the tetragrammaton,
the.
Okay? This is only used for God.
The second word translated
as the lord's unto life, lord, is the
word adon in Hebrew,
which like kyrios in Greek or dominoos
in Latin,
can be used for human beings, for men.
So they are 2 complete
different words in Hebrew,
but both translated as lord by Christians.
They're they're just like Can can I doctor
Hussain, can I just say something on that?
I mean, I completely agree with your, observation.
I use the NRSV,
which is usually seen as the standard academic,
translation
of the Bible use at universities throughout the
West. Looking at Psalm a 110, it has
the Lord says to my Lord. The first
Lord
is in capital letters, which traditionally means that
it's referring to Yahweh in the Hebrew. The
second lord is in small letters
indicating that it's not Yahweh. It's an as
a being sorry. It's a person other than
God. And that's all fine. So, you know,
it's done the right thing here. This is
a good translation. You don't get this distinction
made in some of the other translations, which,
it heavily. However,
the reason I I mentioned this is if
you look at the when this passage, this
verse,
Psalm a 110 verse 1 is quoted in
the New Testament
by the old translators,
they they don't do that. They don't make
a distinction. And so you get Peter talking
about the Lord in in the traditional Christian
sense.
And and there there there is a slight
of hand there in A slight of hand.
In the New Testament translation of this otherwise
Yeah. Very good translation. And I was shocked
when I looked this up and thought, you're
not being consistent here. You're quoting from the
text, and yet you're you're no longer observing
this big metaphysical difference between Yahweh and Yeah.
King or whoever it is. Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And and the Quran says
It's a very, very interesting statement. The Quran
is just really amazing. So it says they
twist their tongues about the scripture. That's the
literal translation.
But here, lisan,
which means tongue, can also mean language. Lisan
means language in Koranic Arabic.
Just like in, in Hebrew, the word leishon,
which is cognate to lisan,
means tongue, the physical tongue. It also means
language. So so the the Arabic language in
Hebrew is called Lishon Khayder,
the tongue of Kedar, who Kedar, one of
the sons of of Ishmael.
So the Quran says here they literally, it
says they they twist their translations
with respect to their scripture
Exactly. I e the Bible. And we can
actually share this. They're the best quality translation.
They're still doing it. So They're still doing
it.
Yeah.
I mean, the ayah continues. In or so
that you might think it's part of the
scripture,
the Quran says, but it's not part of
the scripture.
And they say, this is from God, but
it is not from God.
This is amazing. The Quran is so succinct,
and they utter a lie against God, and
they know it, it says.
They know what they're doing. Right? Now okay.
So now if I'm going to
if I'm going to postulate that that Moses,
peace be upon him, was describing the prophet
Mohammed, peace be upon him, I would need
to provide some sort of indirect or circumstantial,
evidence to support this because there's no direct
evidence.
But before we get to that, a good
question
that I should answer
is is why isn't it crystal clear that
Deuteronomy 1818 is referring to the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, or why isn't it
more clear?
This is a good question, and I think
the Quran has the answer to this. So
in chapter 2 verse 79,
okay, the Quran says,
So woe to those who write the book,
right, with their own or the scripture, the
Bible, however you wanna translate, with their own
hands and then say this is from God
in order to make a paltry gain therefrom.
Woe unto them for what their hands have
written,
and woe unto them for what they have
gained. So Imam Tabari and many others, they
say one of the meanings of this verse
is that some Jewish scribes
altered the, their book, okay, their kitab,
their scriptures
so that the descriptions of the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, would seem to indicate
someone else rather than him.
Okay? In other words, they've obfuscated the text.
They've muddied the waters, as they say. They've
decontextualized
the text.
At first glance, this might seem a bit,
far fetched.
How would this even be,
possible? But when we study the history of
the Pentateuch,
the 5 books of Moses, as well as
the history of the so called,
Deuteronomistic
books, so that's Joshua the second kings,
okay, as well as the book of Jeremiah,
suddenly,
Imam Tabari's suggestion
seems very plausible, and I'll come back to
that
as well.
A Jewish apologist
might say to me at this point,
just read Deuteronomy 1818
in the context of the Tanakh,
and you will see that it does not
refer to the prophet Muhammad. In other words,
Deuteronomy 1818
as it stands now,
okay, and as it has stood for the
last 2000 years
in its post compositional
context,
that is to say in its canonical
context,
does seem to point to others
as being the prophet like Moses, and I
actually agree with that. I think that's true.
That's exactly what Imam Tabari said as well.
So I can totally understand why Jewish exegetes
over the last 2000 years
have said that the prophet like Moses
was Joshua or Jeremiah.
You see the Jewish exegetes are not necessarily
the problem.
The authors and editors of these texts are
the problem, those who decontextualize
the text.
Now the Quran says
So this is chapter 5,
verse 15.
Another extraordinary statement in the Quran. O people
of the book,
or
o people of the Bible, our messenger has
come to you
clarifying much of what you used to conceal
concerning the Bible. Okay? Decontextualization
is a form of concealment.
Okay? The prophet's message, peace be upon him,
prompted or, you could say, provoked this type
of critical examination,
of the bible. The Quran further says this
is chapter 4 of verse 46.
I know I'm throwing a lot of verses
out.
From the Jews are those who distort words
from their proper places,
or you might translate that shift words out
of their proper context.
They have decontextualized
the Bible. I think this is also true
about the passages that they claim
are describing this future Davidic Messiah who will
rule the world. I think in their original
context, these passages are actually describing somebody else,
but that that's a different topic.
But there's something else I wanna make clear
before we continue.
That it is unlike the Jews who converted
to Pauline Christianity.
Okay? The Jews who converted to Islam
converted to a religion
that upheld
the most important thing about God.
Okay? His radical oneness and utter unique uniqueness.
Okay. Islam from a Jewish perspective is true
monotheism.
Jews are allowed to pray in mosques, and
Jews allow Muslims to pray in synagogues.
In other words, there is a very coherent,
and consistent
underlying
sort of theological
trajectory from Moses
to Mohammed, peace be upon both of them.
The same cannot be said about Moses and
the Christian Jesus
No matter how hard Christians want to claim
this,
Moses and the Christian Jesus are fundamentally opposed
to one another and this this fundamental opposition
is is nearly as great
as the difference between Moses and Joseph Smith,
I would say. I mean, trinitarianism is veiled
polytheism.
Mormonism is an open polytheism.
The Mormons admit that Jesus is another god
in addition to Elohim, the God of Abraham,
while the Trinitarians are still trying, to convince
us and themselves,
that Jesus is the incarnation of the same
being as the God of Abraham.
According to a rabbinical consensus, it is forbidden
for a Jew to enter a church. Even
to enter a church, forbidden. This is the
position of, you know, Maimonides all the way
down. A church is a house of avudaszara,
of idolatry. Bless you. Yeah.
So the Quran in one chapter, one surah,
okay, both confirms the teaching of the of
the of the Shema
and repudiates Christianity. Okay? So the Shema is
Deuteronomy
64. Right? Shema Israel Adonai Elohinu Adonai Ichad.
Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the
Lord is 1. Okay?
The prophet like Moses
predicted in 18/18
of the same book, Deuteronomy,
must, at the bare minimum,
confirm this theology.
If he if he doesn't, he's a false
prophet. I mean, it's it's as simple as
that.
This is nonnegotiable.
Okay?
The mark in Jesus
does quote the Shema,
as you know, in Mark 1229,
and explicitly
denies being God in Mark 10 18.
Right? When the when the man came to
him and said,
in the Greek,
good good master,
what must I do to gain eternal life?
And he said,
why me do you call good?
There's no one good but 1,
theos,
the God.
Alright? Or in Aramaic, Allah.
Right? That's the word that he would have
used
in Aramaic. Now interestingly,
Matthew and Luke,
who had access to Mark, did not include
these statements in their gospels.
Matthew and Luke went out of their way
to remove or edit these statements,
in order to make Jesus appear more divine.
So so the Christian Jesus, not Isa ibn
Maryam, not Yeshu Ahan Notsri,
the Christian Jesus, the Jesus of Christian confession,
the Jesus of the ecumenical councils is a
false prophet
by the standards of Deuteronomy.
He did not teach God's radical oneness.
Okay? He called to another god himself.
He said things that did not come to
pass, and he was hanged on a tree,
thus accursed according to Deuteronomy.
Paul proudly
embraces the latter in Galatians. Right? He says
Jesus became a curse for us. Jesus was
accursed
according to Paul.
I mean, the Quran says the opposite,
that he was blessed. Right? So the Quran
says,
Say he is
Allah.
Right? Huwa. And Huwa
so
say Huwa is Allah and the word Huwa
is a pronoun. It means he is.
But it's interesting. The two letters here for
huwa are and waw,
and and these are the prominent letters of
the tetragrammaton
that is often shortened in the bible as
these two letters, as a hey involve.
So like the name Joshua in Hebrew is
Yehoshua,
Right? That Yahweh is Yahweh is salvation.
Right? So this this could be
an indication that the Quran is is confirming
the the Shem HaMafurash,
Allahu Adam. So say he is God. He
is Ahad. The word Ahad in the Quran
is exactly the same word as Ihad
in the Shema.
Right?
Allahu Samad, you know, God is independent.
He did not beget nor was he begotten,
or you can say he did not generate
an essential equal
nor is he a generated essential equal.
And there's nothing comparable unto God whatsoever. So
this is the entire surah, surah
112 of the Quran. It and it has
many names. One of the names of the
surah is a tawhid,
like monotheism.
It's also called al asas, the foundation
of all religion. It's called al Ikhlas,
sincerity.
Right? You know, it's it's a little
it's it's it's a bit funny. Christian apologist
constantly tell us
ad nauseam
that their theology is grounded in the Tanakh,
that the Jesus of Christian confession was a
Jewish rabbi whose message was consistent
with the Tanakh. The Tanakh is our foundation,
the Tanakh is our you hear this a
lot from them that Judaism just sort of,
I don't know, organically
begot Christianity.
They say this over and over again, but
here's the thing.
Ask them if the message of the Christian
Jesus
was so grounded in the fundamental theology of
the Tanakh,
then then why did the Jewish leaders
try to stone Jesus
in John chapter 8? Now, if you say,
or if I say
maybe they didn't like him, maybe they overreacted
to some minor offense, maybe they misunderstood
him.
They will say, no,
They tried to stone him because Jesus committed
blasphemy
by claiming to be God. So there's a
big problem here. Can I just can I
just interject if I may? I I have
the privilege of interviewing, professor John Barton, who's
a professor of the Bible at University of
Oxford. He's one of his world class biblical
scholars
on this question and,
of Mark 10 where Jesus denies he is
God,
and how Matthew, for example, who uses Mark,
changes the words of Jesus,
to remove,
this denial.
And John Barton himself
said
that this was dishonest
of Matthew to do. Now John Barton is
an Anglican priest as well as a biblical
scholar.
The the top scholars acknowledge this,
and they use I mean, he used the
word dishonest. He's saying that Matthew has been
dishonest in changing the words of Jesus to
remove Jesus' denial. He was,
God so that presumably,
what the Jesus then says is a conformity
with late 1st century Christian theology,
that Matthew might hold. So I think that's
remarkable,
admission and not unique either.
But the missionaries and apologists, of course, will
not go that far, but their own scholars
do go that far, and they would agree
with you, I think. Yeah. Yeah. As you
said, it's it's a bit of a, of
a cover up
a cover up of of Mark 19. It
is. Yeah. That's what it is. Yeah. So,
you know, it's it's really interesting. I mean,
like, the Christians will say they're trying to
they wanna stone Jesus because he's committed blasphemy.
So they want their cake, and they wanna
eat it too. So the Christian apologists are
really speaking out of both sides of their
mouths. Either the Christian Jesus agrees
with the fundamental theology of the Tanakh
or he doesn't.
So you can't have it both ways. To
say it another way, okay, Christians believe that
Jewish law
revealed by God says that if a man
commits blasphemy,
he must be put to death. So that's
what they tried to do in John chapter
8. But then Christians wanna blame the Jews
for following their law
and not accepting
a man's blasphemous claims as being true.
It's very it's very, very strange.
What's even more befuddling is that Christians believe
that the person who made these blasphemous claims
was the same one who told the Jews
in the Tanakh
to kill people who commit blasphemy.
You know, it it's it's a big paradox.
I would say to the Christian apologist, I
would I would say, just admit that in
reality,
you are teaching a radically different theology.
Okay?
Only in theory is it the God of
Abraham.
Okay? But in reality, one might
even go so far as to say that
it's a different god. I mean, and and
I think the Quran implies that. If you
believe that Jesus of Nazareth, peace be upon
him, was divine,
then that is a different god. And Deuteronomy
13 says that even if your brother tries
to entice you to worship another god, your
hand
shall be the first to stone him.
Okay? And the Christians, they say, yes. This
is why the Jews tried to stone him
in John chapter 10. So so then why
why would the Johann and Jesus expect anyone
in Israel
to accept his claims
when he's going around committing blasphemy?
It doesn't make any sense. Why did he
call the Jews
who rightfully tried to stone him for according
to the Christians,
who rightfully tried to stone him for blasphemy,
why did he call them children of Satan?
In John chapter 8, he calls them children
of Satan because they won't accept his blasphemy?
You're not supposed to accept blasphemy.
According
to
Jesus who revealed the Torah according to Christians.
So
with with with all due respect, this is
this is highly with all due respect to
the Christians, this is highly incoherent.
So I actually respect, like, Marcion. Right? Marcion,
I mean, I completely
disagree with his views,
but at least Marcion was honest enough to
admit the truth that the Christian Jesus
and the God of the Tanakh are basically
irreconcilable.
So that Marcion just to point out to
viewers who may not know, Marcion was a
second century
church,
a Christian, in the church, although he was
ultimately
expelled from the church. He basically rejected the
old testament and much of what is in
the new testament because he was quite anti
Jewish, and he didn't Right.
Bits of Paul perhaps,
and didn't,
so but he he was ultimately,
expelled from the Yeah. Post orthodox church. But,
yeah, he he exactly as you say. Yeah.
I mean, I would just I would just
tell the apologist, just just sort of embrace
your marcianism. I mean, stop trying to tell
us that 3 equals 1 and that God
is a man, we need to drink his
blood and, you know, God became a human
sacrifice. So these are beliefs that Christian apologists
claim are in the Tanakh.
Yes. You know? That's like one of my
professors, he said it like this. That's like
reading
Nietzsche's book, the antichrist,
and concluding that Nietzsche must have been an
ordained Franciscan friar.
I mean, how off the mark can you
be?
Is it even possible to be more wrong?
Again, I don't mean to disrespect the Christians
that are listening, but I really hope that
they think about these things because I sincerely
think that many, many Christians have never really
considered
their own theology.
Okay? You know, in the Quran, we're told
that Abraham asked his people, afareitum makuntum tabudun?
Like, have you really
considered what you worship?
And, Imam al Razi, he said that this
story indicates that Abraham's people
committed the error of what's known as theological
taqleed.
Theological
takleed, that's a good
term.
Takleed,
in other words, they they blindly
accepted what others told them about God
without asking for the proofs.
Okay? So I would encourage the Christians just
to ask themselves, does it make any historical
sense
that 2000 years ago, a Jewish rabbi from
Nazareth in Galilee
was walking around claiming to be God?
That's number 1. Number 2, if he was
walking around claiming to be God, why on
earth would you believe him?
Maybe their response would be, well, because he
could work miracles.
But false prophets
can work miracles according to Tanakh, according to
Matthew,
according to Jesus and Matthew.
Fundamental
theology
is the is the sticking point.
If that is off,
everything is off. Yeah. Okay. At least the
Jews who came to believe that Deuteronomy 1818
was a reference to the prophet Muhammad accepted
an interpretation of the text
that did not violate the very ground of
Jewish theology.
They did not maintain that the Jews got
it all wrong completely at the most basic
level.
No. The foundation is solid. Okay. The errors
of Judaism according to Islam are in other
areas.
Okay. Prophetology
in particular.
The Quran reprimands
Judaism at some level, but it does not
introduce a radically new theology that obliterates its
foundations.
The Quran says that Jewish scribal alterations
have misguided them or deceived them
with respect to aspects of their religion.
That if they critically examine their tradition, their
history, their scripture,
they will come to recognize
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as
God's messenger.
Okay? But let's talk about Deuteronomy now more
specifically.
So the tohid of God yeah. Right? The
yechidus in Hebrew, the oneness of God,
the radical
uniqueness of God
is established in the book of Deuteronomy like
no other book of the Pentateuch.
The fundamental theology of Deuteronomy
is consistent
with the theology of the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him. And that is the
most important thing. Yeah. While while the fundamental
theology of Deuteronomy
is antithetical to the Christian Jesus, not Isa
ibn Maryam alayhis salam alayhis salam, the Christian
Jesus.
However, according to nearly all historians,
Deuteronomy was not written by Moses.
So who wrote it?
It was written by a rigidly
monotheistic
school
of Jewish reformers.
Okay? A Jewish school of law and theology
that historians call the d school,
the deuteronomic
school.
Okay? I always say the d school got
an a in theology.
Right? This was in the 8th century before
the common era. There is near consensus about
this. Even Musorti
rabbi, like, conservative
rabbis
accept this.
Many conservative rabbis accept the documentary
hypothesis.
They even assert that Wellhausen's, you know, redactor,
or the redactor was really
they say, our Lord, that this is how
God chose to unfold the Torah because
the evidence is just overwhelming.
And for the listeners who are not familiar
with this, you know, for the uninitiated,
look up the documentary
hypothesis
of Julius Wellhausen.
Can can I can I just mention a
a a book plug here? Yeah. I recommend
this book. Now this is called, Introduction to
the Bible.
It's by a professor called Christine Hayes. I
will link to it in the description below.
Now she is a professor at Yale University,
a colleague of Dale Martin, who I've interviewed
several times.
This is an introduction to the Jewish Bible.
Doesn't mention the New Testament, really. There's a
whole chapter on Deuteronomy.
I've I've read it in a discussion of
the Wellhausen
hypothesis, the so called documentary hypothesis.
This is an introductory text for 1st year
undergraduates,
and, I do recommend it. You can get
it on Amazon if you want a more
scholarly background introduction to all these issues as
understood from a Western
historian's
perspective. Right. So I I personally would recommend
that, a readable,
introduction to the subject, published by Yale University
Press.
Yeah. Christine Hayes is is excellent.
Also, who wrote the there's a book called
Who Wrote the Bible? Richard Elliott Friedman.
Okay? Everyone everyone needs to read this book.
It was published, I think, in 1987.
Muslims need to know this stuff. Now now
the orthodox Jewish apologist,
okay,
like Rabbi Tovia Singer
or Rabbi Michael Skoback, for example Yeah. This
is interesting.
The Orthodox Jewish apologist
has a major advantage
over his Christian interlocutor.
So what is his what is his advantage?
He knows that the Christian will not
and cannot engage in any historical criticism of
the Tanakh,
the Old Testament,
yet he is free as a Jew to
appeal to the historical consensus
when it comes to the New Testament.
So the Jewish apologist will say to the
Christian,
Moses wrote Deuteronomy, and the Christian will nod
his head in affirmation.
But the gospel of John was written in
the year 100 by an anonymous hand, and
the Christian will shake his head in negation.
But but, so so this is a major
advantage.
Right?
However, the uneven
method of the Jewish apologist, I think, can
be exposed
by the Muslim. You know, those same historians,
the general historical
consensus
that says John was written between 91100
also says that Moses
did not write
Deuteronomy,
that it was written 100 of years later.
Now the Jew and the Christian, they might,
you know, join forces here and say, well,
what about what historians say about who wrote
the Quran?
Okay. Well, that's good. The the standard academic
historical narrative
about the the collection
and codification of the Quran
is still Theodore Noldeke. Okay? The history of
the Quran.
And Noldeke,
in his second volume,
is basically in total agreement with the Muslim
confessional narrative
that the the text of the Quran was
standardized
by the Uthmanic committee within 15 years of
the prophet
by his companions,
immediate companions,
who heard the Quran,
recited to them directly
by the prophet for 23 years on a
daily basis.
Okay? In other words, the vast, vast majority
of historical scholars,
with the exception of some blue haired revisionist
quacks,
believe
that
believe that the text of the Quran
we have today
originated with the prophet of Islam, whether he
was a prophet or not. He is the
historical source of the text we read and
recite today. The source and the text of
the Quran
is multiply attested.
This is never going to change. The general
consensus
on this is never going to change.
So the Torah and the Quran are in
different universes
when it comes to historical criticism. The old
Yeah.
About
if readers don't want to read all these
terms and learn this, it's a simple way
of ascertaining whether or not Deuteronomy was written
by Moses. And you can do this even
now. You can simply
open up the bible, look at the first
couple of verses of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 1,
and the last verses. In the last verse,
you get Moses' own death being reported in
the in the in the letter. Yeah. Something
tells me that Matthew Moses didn't write that
chapter. Yeah.
Beginning, it says,
these are the words that Moses allegedly spoke,
to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the
wilderness. So it's talking about a time in
the past Mhmm. When Moses said these things
on the other side of the Jordan because
Moses, of course, didn't reach the promised land.
So Right. The,
this is a a future, you know, maybe
100 of years
after the of Moses, someone is saying, well,
that time when Moses was at on that
side, the other side of the Jordan, not
the trans Jordan. And, of course, it causes
death at the very end. So it's very
simple for anyone to Right. Ascertain,
that Moses couldn't have written versus that referred
to him in the past tense and his
own death. That would be my simple test
in the past tense. Yeah. Yeah. And the
oldest the oldest near complete Torah on earth
is removed from Moses by 1500
years.
That's a Dead Sea Scrolls, is it? Or
Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah. And it's not complete.
Right. So so what I'm going to say
now about the Torah,
okay, is the standard historical narrative
of the vast, vast majority of Old Testament
scholars,
I will be speaking according to the opinion
of a near consensus of historians
when it comes to the Torah, gospel, and
Quran. All 3. I'm going to be consistent.
The near consensus is that Moses did not
write Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
The absolute consensus is that Jesus never saw
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The the near consensus is that Mark was
written around 70,
then then Matthew, then Luke, and then John
around 90, 100, maybe even later.
The near consensus is that the entire text
of the Quran we have today was first
uttered by Mohammed of Arabia, peace be upon
him.
Okay? So according to a historical
near consensus,
the book of Deuteronomy was written about 800
years after Moses,
yet throughout the book,
Moses is quoted by the d school authors.
So the laws of Deuteronomy were put into
a framework of a speech of Moses.
Okay. Technically,
this is called pseudepigrapha
from from the Greek, pseudace and epigrapha,
meaning false ascription. This was quite common practice
among the Jews of that period,
okay, among the scribes. So so this is
exactly what we said about the New Testament
gospels.
From a Muslim perspective, Deuteronomy is not the
original pristine revelation given to Moses, and history
agrees with us, agrees with the Muslims that
Moses did not write Deuteronomy.
So we would say that some of the
true teachings of Moses are preserved in the
text,
but just as we must be discerning with
the New Testament gospels, we must also be
with the Torah.
So the Quran, the the uncorrupted,
multiply attested
original revelation of the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, is the standard against
which,
Deuteronomy must be measured. And you're absolutely right.
You you gave us 2 pieces of evidence
from from Deuteronomy
itself that do not support
Mosaic,
composition,
the two book ends of the of the
book of Deuteronomy. And these are the words
which which Moses spoke to all Israel on
the other side of the Jordan in the
wilderness.
So as you said, this implies that the
author
was writing while on the eastern side of
the Jordan. Moses never crossed the Jordan. In
fact, Abraham ben Ezra,
okay, one of the greatest and most respected
commentators of the Torah of the Tanakh
in history
suggested that someone after Moses probably wrote these
words. That's Ben Ezra. That's not like Ibn
Kathir or Yamama Tabari. I mean, that's their
own scholar.
Yeah. Right? And then as you said, Deuteronomy
345,
It says, and this and this and and
Moses, the servant of the Lord died.
Right? Be'editsmoav,
in the land of Moav.
And the verb here, vayamot,
is kau imperfect with vav consecutive,
which throws the meaning into the past.
He died
in the past tense.
Now the rabbis and the Christians say, well,
maybe this is the
prophetic past which is sometimes used in the
bible to heighten its vividness.
This doesn't seem likely, especially when we read
verse 6.
If you read 2 verses,
later, it says,
And no man knows his grave
even until this day.
Until this day. So it's a historical distance.
Even today, we still don't
know where people are buried. Even until now,
we don't know where he's buried. Clearly, this
is not historical past in some kind of,
fictional way that this is the absolute past.
Yeah.
Clearly, this is someone writing much much you
know, Baruch Spinoza, right, who was excommunicated
for his beliefs, he famously said something
to the effect of it is clearer than
the sun at noon
that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses,
but by someone who lived long after him.
That's a that's a paraphrase. Impossible,
on that reading thing to read. Yeah. And
also, definitely, are you people will will know
that the rest of the pen the penitentiary
as a whole never claims to be written
by Moses. It's not as if we're denying
what's there in the text. It never claims
to be written by Moses. So that this
is like the gospels who don't claim to
be written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
So the people assume
it's claimed by him, but it's not actually.
Nowhere does the Pentateuch say it was written
by Moses.
Right. Nowhere. It's it's it's taught in tradition,
and and here's another important point. Jewish systematic
theology
was was not really born until the medieval
period, So that's after Islam. Okay? So, like,
Sadia Gaon and Judah HaLevi, Maimonides.
I mean, take Maimonides'
13 principles of Jewish faith, for example. Yeah.
He wrote that in the 12th century.
At least 2 of his principles are in
direct response to Islam.
Yes. Okay? So if you ask an orthodox
Jew who was the greatest prophet, he'll say
Moses. And if you ask him why, he'll
say, well, Maimonides says that. If you ask
a Jew, why don't why don't you believe
that the Torah
can in any way be modified or abrogated,
they'll say, well, because Maimonides says that. Now
a rabbi might respond to me and say,
but Maimonides
uses the Torah itself
to support his assertions.
Now that's true, but I would offer 2
points. Number 1,
we cannot ignore the fact that anti Islamic
polemics in the areas
of prophetology
and scriptural preservation
significantly
shaped the theological discourse of Judaism.
And number 2, historically speaking,
there is no strong evidence that Moses himself
believed
that he was the greatest prophet or that
the Torah that he received was intended to
be the universal law of God until the
end of time. Yes. Maimonides used did use
the Torah to support his conclusions.
The same Torah that was written 100 of
years after Moses,
not written by Moses, never seen or heard
by Moses by historical consensus.
Now with Deuteronomy 18 18,
just as we said with Isaiah 53,
context is king.
Okay? In order to discover the identity of
the prophet like Moses,
we need to study the context of Deuteronomy
1818.
However, there's a challenge here. Deuteronomy
1818
has 3 contexts,
3 of them.
Okay? And this is a bit technical, and
I hope people can follow this. So it
has a pre compositional
context, an original
context.
Yep. Because we're assuming that this tradition of
the prophet like Moses originated with Moses.
So then it also has a compositional
context at the time of its writing.
Okay? And then it also has a post
compositional,
also known as a canonical
context. This is in relation to other texts
in the canon.
Okay?
So it's interesting. Muslims tend to emphasize the
original context.
Historians tend to emphasize its compositional context,
And Jews and Christians tend to emphasize its
canonical context. But let's start with the compositional
context. It's compositional context.
According to historical scholars,
Deuteronomy
was most likely written in the north in
Israel,
okay, as both a theological
and legal reformation.
The authors of Deuteronomy,
and this is something that you mentioned Christine
Hayes
makes a point about,
that the authors of Deuteronomy, the d. School,
believed that their version of the teachings of
Moses
was the correct version.
They wrote it as both a confirmation
and a corrective,
just as the Quran sees itself
as both a confirmation
and a corrective
of the purported teachings of Moses. So the
original core of Deuteronomy was written in the
8th century BCE,
probably only chapters 12 to 26
in the north. Okay?
And then historians believe that the framing chapters
at the beginning and the end were probably
added later, even as late as the exilic
period.
So why do historians say this?
Well, the reason is because Deuteronomy
has has many strong affinities
with prophets of the north like Hosea,
and the Elowist, right, the author of the
e source,
right, who emphasized God's transcendence
as opposed to the Yahwist
who emphasized God's imminence and was very anthropomorphic
at times. Again, I highly,
encourage people to to to learn the documentary
hypothesis of Julius Wellhausen. So so the so
the north was home
to a struggle against the prophets of Baal,
the worship of Baal, you know, the ancient
Canaanite
god.
Elijah and Elisha
are also in the north who were extremely
staunch
monotheists. The Quran actually quotes Elijah.
Right? Do do you call upon Baal and
you forsake
Allah, the best of creators?
So this this very, very strong motif
of uncompromising
monotheism
emerged in the in the region, in the
north. Okay? That's the historical context
of Deuteronomy's composition. Now, when the Assyrians
conquered the northern kingdom of Israel,
so this is in 722 before the common
era,
The book of Deuteronomy,
scholars believe, was brought south into Judah
by a remnant of Israelite refugees,
by Northerners. Okay? And it was kept in
the,
the temple somewhere,
and apparently lost.
Over the next 100 years or so, the
Jews in Judah, in the southern kingdom now,
seriously slipped into idolatry
by mixing their beliefs with the pagan beliefs
of the
Canaanites.
But then around 622
or 623,
during the reign of King Josiah,
during temple repairs,
the book of Deuteronomy is suddenly discovered in
the temple
by the high priest,
Hilkiyahu.
It's called Sefer Torah. This is what the
book of Deuteronomy is called in 2nd Kings
22:8, the scroll of the Torah.
And then this led to major theological and
reforms
throughout Judah. I mean, these reforms
are described in detail in 2nd Kings 23.
So, this is the main point I wanna
make clear.
What did the authors of Deuteronomy do? What
did the d. School do?
They revised,
modified,
canceled,
and corrected
the previously written covenant code.
This was a different version of the teachings
of Moses.
Okay? The covenant code
would later be placed in the canon in
the book of Exodus.
Okay? Today, Orthodox Jews believe
that all of these laws
were written by Moses around 1500
BCE.
Not a single historian takes this position.
The d. School updated and revised
previous laws, especially those in the covenant code,
which is now found in Exodus,
Deuteronomy
itself modifies
and rewrites earlier laws
in light of new circumstances.
They wanted to replace the covenant code, not
compliment it. You know, the d school did
not know that one day their writing would
be placed side by side
or interspersed
with the covenant code
in a book, you know, called Exodus in
the Canon. You know, they didn't know that.
It's kinda like the gospel of Luke.
So Luke in his preamble, right,
he claimed to have a perfect understanding
of the story of Jesus,
and yet he rejected or revised
many of the stories and sayings
found in Mark and Matthew. And and if
you heard the I am statements
that would be recorded later by John, he
didn't record any of those either. Maybe he
didn't hear about them or maybe he didn't
believe in them.
But Luke meant for his gospel
to be the gospel,
the definitive gospel, not one of a quartet.
No.
He didn't write his gospel expecting that one
day it would be placed next to 3
other gospels
in the in the same
It it's even worse than that because presumably,
you're right. In thinking in Luke thinking his
gospel was the the final edition, that meant
by implication that Mark, who he used, was
now redundant.
And it was inferior production because he corrects
and amends Luke in certain ways, and he
adds the nativity and so on. So Mark
actually
is is rendered obsolete
by by implication
of,
Luke's definitive,
you know, writing for you, dear Theophilus, to
give you that all the accounts. So I
In the pre em yeah. And that's that's
exactly what the the d school did. The
d school the the d school who wrote
Deuteronomy
wrote what they believed to be the definitive
Torah,
the Law of Moses, Deuteronomy. And I'll give
you three examples
of how the authors of Deuteronomy
revised, modified, corrected, and abrogated
the earlier version of the Torah written by
the eSchool, the Elohist school.
First of all, why is this even important?
It's it's important because
according to orthodox Judaism,
no one can ever modify
any of the commandments.
But the irony is, this is what the
d. School did itself.
Yes. Okay. So I'll give you an example.
The first example, the authors of Deuteronomy
gave us a second version of the 10
Commandments.
There's 2 versions of the 10 Command Deuteronomy
chapter 5. They revised the 10 Commandments that
were mentioned in Exodus 20 written about a
100 years earlier by the Elohist.
There are substantial
differences between the two.
Orthodox Jewish tradition has these very
imaginative ways of explaining away these differences,
but the truth, I think, is obvious. The
d school was correcting
what they thought was a corrupted
form
of the teachings,
teachings, instruction, Torah
of Moses.
You know, is it zakor eth Yom Shabbat,
or is it shamor eth Yom Shabbat?
Is it is it remember
the Sabbath day or keep the Sabbath day?
According to orthodox authorities,
that this difference is substantial. These are not
synonyms.
Okay? You know, the and the the rabbi
has really struggled with this. In in the
Talmud
and in the Midrashim,
they say that God said both simultaneously
and that Moses somehow miraculously
understood both words individually, then for whatever reason,
remember was recorded in in Exodus and keep
was recorded in Deuteronomy. This is how they
explain it. I I I don't think it's
very convincing.
Another example,
in in Exodus,
it says very clearly that those places
where God revealed himself
can become places of sacrifice.
Okay. Wherever God whenever at wherever a patriarch
had some sort of experience with God, all
you have to do is make an altar
there and start sacrificing animals. That's Exodus 2024.
That's the covenant code. In Deuteronomy,
these places, they're called the high places,
must all be destroyed.
Deuteronomy mandates
1 centralized
place for sacrifices.
Okay? So the d school completely disagreed
with the authors of the covenant code. The
d school prohibited sacrifices
at these places.
And for this reason, King Josiah
destroyed all of these altars at the high
places and only permitted sacrifices
to take place in Jerusalem.
I'll give you a third example of how
Deuteronomy
abrogates, modifies, and cancels the previous version of
the Torah.
Slavery laws.
In the covenant code found in Exodus,
a male Hebrew slave
serves his master for 6 years
and is freed on the 7th year
without receiving any payment upon release. He doesn't
get anything.
Okay? In Deuteronomy,
he served 6 years. He's freed on 7th,
but he must be paid
with a livestock, with grain,
with
wine. Two laws written by 2 different schools
at 2 different times that are at odds
with one another.
Okay? In the covenant code, a a Hebrew
female slave is never freed by her master
unless she's mistreated.
She's never she's never released.
In Deuteronomy, it says that she has to
be treated exactly like a male slave. In
other words, she she'll serve for 6 years,
and then she's freed on 7th.
Totally different. Deuteronomy is much nicer to women.
In the in the covenant code, it it
says that if a slave wants to remain
a slave,
then he is brought to brought to God,
it says, and his ear is pierced,
meaning he's brought to the local shrine, the
local altar.
Okay? In Deuteronomy,
he must be brought to the door, it
says, meaning
the door of his slave master's house and
his ear is pierced. Why the difference? Because
the d school is totally against
these local altars.
And then in Leviticus,
check this out, it gets even deeper, in
Leviticus.
So later in the 6th century before the
common era, the p school, yet another school,
wrote down their own law code,
their Jewish law code. It's called the holiness
code.
The p school disagreed with both the covenant
code and the d school and abolished
Hebrew on Hebrew slavery
altogether. No Israelite
may enslave another Israelite.
So we have this evolving legislation
by different schools over a 100 of years.
This is the general scholarly
consensus.
And you know what? What else that's interesting
is that the author of First and Second
Chronicles,
he's called the Chronicler,
he, as as you know, he restated the
history of Israel found in 1st and second
Samuel and 1st and second Kings.
He completely disagreed
with many of the stories
about David
that are mentioned in 1st and second Samuel.
Yeah. David and Bathsheba, not there. The murder
of Uriah, not there. Two different schools of
history and theology.
Yeah. You know? And then that's quite similar
to the Islamic understanding because the the other
understanding
has David as a as a criminal, adulterer,
murderer.
But the chronicles had a very different portrayal,
and and they they sit very uneasily together
in the same scripture.
Right. That's and yeah. So so the main
point here, and I'll get back to the
prophet like Moses, the laws of Deuteronomy
were meant to replace the old covenant code
laws.
The mistake, with all due respect,
the mistake of many of the Orthodox Jews
is that they maintain that all of these
laws, all of these mitzvot
were revealed to Moses on Sinai
during those 40 nights or even during the
40 years. Yep. And that they're all somehow
binding
even though they clearly contradict,
and many of them are obsolete.
The orthodox say that unless the prophet Mohammed,
peace be upon him, confirms
all of these 613
mitzvot,
then he cannot be a prophet for the
Israelites. Okay?
Some medieval rabbis there was a 12th century
medieval rabbi, a Yemenite
rabbi, rabbi, Nathaniel al Fayyumi.
His book is called Garden of the Intellects.
Bustan Al Oqul, it's called, Gan
Gan Hash Sikhlim or something like that,
in Hebrew. He says in that book that
the prophet Muhammad was a Nabi Emet, a
true
prophet, but sent to the Goyim only. He's
only sent to Gentiles, not the Yehudim
because he did not confirm
all 613
mitzvot. He considers that sort of a deal
breaker.
However, other scholars,
Shamuel ben Yehuda Al Maghribi,
Okay? Shamuel Ben Yehuda Al Maghribi was a
Jewish scholar,
turned Muslim, converted to Islam. He argues in
his book. It's called Ifham ul Yahud
Ifham ul Yahud,
the confounding of the Jews.
He says that it would have been impossible,
impossible
for the prophet Muhammad to confirm all 613
mitzvot
because many of them deal with
the temple,
the priesthood, and the sacrifices.
None of these three things existed
at the prophet's time,
So abrogation
cannot be denied.
It is a reality.
I'll give you an example.
Mitzvah number
380, so 613
Commandments, number 380, and this is according to
the numbering of Maimonides.
What does number 380 say? It says the
priests, the kohanim,
must carry the Ark of the Covenant,
the Arun Habirit,
on their shoulders.
Well, there's no Ark, and there's no priesthood.
Even the Orthodox admit. I mean, go to,
like, you know, chabad.org.
Right? There are articles on this. They admit
that almost half of the 613
Mitzvot
have no application today. Yeah. In other words,
half of the Mitzvot were de facto abrogated
as a circumstance of history. The we would
say the qadr of Allah, the the the
will of God, his irada koniyyah
in effect abrogated almost half of the mitzvot.
In other words, God saw it fit for
those mitzvot to be rendered obsolete.
And this, in my opinion, is strong circumstantial
evidence
that God did not intend for the Torah
to be the last and universal sacred law.
Of course, the Jewish response to this is,
well, when the Messiah comes,
he'll restore all 613
laws. Okay. That's fine. But
that that would mean that for the vast,
vast majority of Jewish history, almost half of
the mitzvot had no application.
That doesn't make sense. It sounds like wishful
thinking.
Now now Orthodox Jews also believe in something
called
Gilgul
neshama.
Gilgul
neshama, literally
the rolling of the soul. A lot of
people don't know this. This is reincarnation,
metempsychosis.
Okay?
Most of them say, however, that this is
only limited
to people who died as children
and therefore never,
sort of had the opportunity
to choose good or evil.
Okay?
However, some Orthodox teach
that in order to enter the olam haba,
the world to come, a Jew must complete
a substantial amount of the commandments
and that this could take several lifetimes
because there are so many commandments.
Maimonides is actually silent on this issue of
of, reincarnation.
You know, Sadia Gaion vehemently rejects it. He
thinks that reincarnation was a deviant belief that
infiltrated Judaism
from pagans.
Interestingly, the Quran even intimates
that many laws of the Jews
were invented by the Jews themselves
and that this created
this huge burden for them. In that same
verse at the beginning of the session,
7157.
Right? Those who follow the messenger, the unleaded
prophet. The Quran says that the prophet Muhammad
relieves them of their burdens and the shackles
that are upon them. It's just a beautiful
verse. Imam al Zamasheri, he says that this
is a reference to the Jewish law
and that the Quran strips away many of
those invented
self imposed
commandments.
Now here's something ironic, though.
The authors of Deuteronomy,
they said in Deuteronomy chapter 4 and chapter
13
that Moses commanded
the Israelites
to not add or delete anything from the
law. Okay?
This is cited by the Orthodox
as the reason for their rejection of Jesus
and Mohammed, peace be upon him. Because Jesus
and Mohammed, they modified, they updated, they abrogated
certain commandments.
But but the question is the historical question
is why did the authors of Deuteronomy say
this? And there are two reasons that I
can think of, and this is pointed out
by Moshe Weinfeld and Bernard Levinson. These are,
you know, eminent scholars of Jewish studies.
They contributed to the Jewish Study Bible, the
Oxford Study Bible.
Weinfeld was a highly respected professor of Judaism,
at
Hebrew University,
in in Jerusalem.
So they say that the book of Deuteronomy
was clearly modeled upon the ancient
Assyrian vassal treaty.
Okay? The best examples of these treaties,
are the treaties of the Assyrian Emperor
Esarhaddon
discovered about 60 years ago. So this is
quite recent.
There is incredible correspondence
in content and phraseology and style
to these Assyrian vassal treaties.
For example, laws reinforced by curses,
but also this non alteration clause.
Right? Do not add or delete anything. It's
a it's a common feature in ancient near
eastern literature.
We find it in ancient law codes, the
the code of Hammurabi,
the Hittite,
treaties.
The authors of Deuteronomy said this
because that was a basic feature
of these ancient vassal loyalty treaties.
Okay?
So Deuteronomy is clearly an 8th or 7th
century document.
But the second reason why the d schools
said this is because they believed
that scribes from other schools had falsified the
Torah.
That's why they wrote Deuteronomy. What does Deuteronomy
mean? Deuteronomos,
a second law, a second version of the
law. Right? They were telling these other schools
in effect,
stop adding and deleting from the law or
else God will curse you. And of course,
the other schools would say the same thing
to the d school. Now what's interesting is
the the book of Jeremiah
is very closely tied to Deuteronomy.
Okay? The book of Jeremiah
uses
the text, the language,
the the themes, the theology
of of of Deuteronomy very explicitly.
It's a different author, but he adopted the
d. School positions.
The author of Jeremiah
also agreed
with the d school that certain scribe is
from other schools
had falsified
the Torah of Moses, the teachings of Moses.
Jeremiah
8:8.
What does it say? How can you say
we are wise?
Because we have the law of the Lord,
the Torah
Adonai.
How can you say we are wise? Because
we have the law of the Lord.
For indeed,
the false pen of the scribes
have turned it into a lie.
Jeremiah 88.
Now
both Jews and Christians will say,
no. No. No. This means that the the
pen of the scribes have lay labored in
vain because the word shekar
in Hebrew could mean to be in vain.
Now that's true,
but the vast majority of the time in
the Bible,
Shekhar means lie, deception,
falsehood,
fraud, and forgery.
And just go to
a concordance. It's in Exodus, it's in Deuteronomy,
it's in
Proverbs, but also in Jeremiah's own usage several
times.
Right? I mean, at one point, for instance,
Jeremiah, he warns
the Jewish captive about
false prophets who prophesy
lies to you
in my name,
he said. Can I just,
just add, in the n I NRSV, which
is, I say, before is the the standard
the gold standard in academic,
studies of the the Bible when it's read
in English that is?
On this verse, this is Jeremiah 88, it
says, how can you say we are wise
and the law of the Lord is with
us
when, in fact, the false pen of the
scribes
has made it into a lie.
So that's, backing up precisely your position. This,
ironically is a Christian translation. It's a particularly
it usually seems a very fair and objective
and scholarly one. So, yeah, it it according
to that, it's it's a lie as you
say. Yeah. Yeah. So very clearly here, Jeremiah
is reprimanding
certain scribes
who did in fact corrupt the text of
the Torah
with their false writings, with their 8 shekel,
literally their false pen.
So the plain truth is that this verse
indicates a textual alteration of the Torah
did occur prior to Jeremiah's time
and that such, alterations were significant
and widespread enough to warrant a prophetic reprimand.
So Jeremiah is probably talking about the covenant
code,
that later made it into the Bible, the
Bible canon. Right? It's probably he's probably talking
about what Deuteronomy
was was correcting, the covenant code that made
it in Exodus.
Okay. So
going back now to the prophet of 18/18,
who is the prophet of 18/18? So I've
sort of laid the groundwork. According to its
compositional
context,
okay, so according to,
the d school in the 8th century,
he will be a prophet of uncompromising
monotheism,
like Moses.
He will only speak according to inspiration.
He will be from the brethren of the
Israelites.
Furthermore, it seems that he will punish the
Jews who slipped into disbelief,
false
worship, in this case, the worship of Baal,
like like Moses who punished the Israelites for
worshiping the golden calf. This is intimated by
the next verse, 18/19,
and whosoever shall not hearken unto his words,
that he shall speak in my name, I
shall require it of him, or I shall
take vengeance of him, in the in the
Catholic version.
Finally, it seems that he will be an
Israelite. Okay? So Deuteronomy 34
indicates this, which is the d school talking
by way of commentary
suggesting that he will be an Israelite who
is yet to come. Okay? So by the
8th century, before the common era,
he has not yet come. Right? So, like,
Deuteronomy 3410,
it
says,
and there has not yet risen a prophet
in Israel
like Moses. So the d school authors, they
don't propose any specific names.
In 349 of Deuteronomy,
you can argue that the author sort of
seemed to indicate Joshua,
but in the very next verse, they say
that a prophet like Moses has yet to
rise in Israel. So it seems to me
that the authors were saying that Joshua was
the leader of the Israelites
after Moses, but not the prophet like Moses.
He's not the prophet like Moses.
Okay.
So they wrote that Joshua had chokhmah, which
means wisdom. It's usually associated with sages,
but they don't mention Navua. They they don't
say he was a Navee.
Right? He gave law to people. He wasn't
a prophet in Not a prophet. Yeah. So
according to the compositional context,
the prophet like Moses will be a great
prophet of monotheism
who, like Moses, will have a special relationship
with God,
and it appears that he will be an
Israelite.
However, again, remember that many scholars believe that
chapter 34 of Deuteronomy was added much later.
So that's another piece to all this. Now
at this point, the Christian apologist is jubilant.
Right? It's You see? It's Jesus.
But the Christian Jesus
taught his own deity
and co equality with 2 other persons
who are also God.
This is blasphemy according to Deuteronomy,
and Christians admit that it's blasphemy
according to Deuteronomy.
So so that's the that's the compositional
context.
Now let's look at the canonical context of
Deuteronomy. Okay. So in other words, it's post
compositional
context.
Okay. So when when the Pentateuch,
okay, when the 5 scrolls, when the Torah,
the Chumash were being put together
in the 6th century before the common era,
the the redactor, the one who did this,
probably Ezra and probably commissioned by the Persians,
he placed Deuteronomy
5th
after Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers. Right? So he did this because
Deuteronomy
included a restatement,
of many of the laws and stories found
in the previous four books, the previous tetra
toque, Genesis to Numbers.
And, again, this is why Deuteronomy is called
the second law. So so in its in
its canonical context,
Deuteronomy was a bridge.
Really, it's a bridge linking
the tetra toque,
Genesis to Numbers,
with the Deuteronomistic
history,
which is Joshua the second Kings.
So it's both a conclusion to the tetrotoque
as well as an introduction
to what's known as the dehistory,
okay, which is Joshua the 2nd Kings.
Now according to Martin Knowth, and this is
the standard historical view,
the books Joshua
to 2nd Kings called the de history
was written by one author, right, the Deuteronomistic
historian. We just we'll call him the dehistorian,
and he finished working around the time of
the exile.
And he, like the author of Jeremiah,
also adhered
to the theology, the history, and the laws
of Deuteronomy. That's why he's called the dehistorian.
Okay. So according to the dehistorian,
the prophet like Moses was Joshua.
Okay? The dehistorian wrote in the book of
Joshua
chapter 1
that God said to Moses,
was Joshua. That was his opinion,
but there are other opinions.
As I said, the book of Jeremiah is
very closely tied to Deuteronomy.
The author of Jeremiah thought that the prophet
like Moses was Jeremiah.
The author of the book of Jeremiah said
that Jeremiah said,
that the Lord said unto me,
indeed,
behold, I will put my words in your
mouth. So you see the literary parallel
to Deuteronomy 18 18.
According to the author of Jeremiah,
the prophet like Moses was Jeremiah.
That was his opinion. So when it comes
to the canonical context of Deuteronomy 18/18, there's
a difference of opinion as to who he
is. According to the dehistorian, he's Joshua. According
to the author of Jeremiah, he's Jeremiah.
This is why the rabbis have said either
Joshua
or Jeremiah. They're operating under the canonical context
of Deuteronomy 1818.
They believe that all of these books were
inspired by God
and are therefore seamlessly
coherent.
So they believe that when God spoke to
Moses,
he intended to describe
either Joshua or Jeremiah. There's a difference of
opinion.
Then when God spoke to or about Joshua
or Jeremiah, he identified one of them as
being the prophet like Moses.
So Bahiyyah ibn Pakuda, one of the most
famous
systematic theologians of the medieval period, he his
opinion is that the prophet like Moses is
Joshua.
Okay? So he he agrees with the dehistorian.
But then realizing
that there are other candidates like Jeremiah,
he says, well, the word nave in Deuteronomy
1818, the word a prophet
can also be understood as a plural.
Right?
So Rabbi Michael Stoback
of Jews for Judaism, he says something similar.
He says that Deuteronomy 1818
could apply to multiple prophets
after Moses,
but the word is clearly singular.
Now unfortunately for the Christian,
okay, he the Christian is left in a
very, very difficult situation.
The
Christian
that all of these books
were inspired by God and therefore seamlessly coherent.
Okay? However, the Christian is forced to deny
the opinion of the dehistorian
as well as the opinion
of the author of Jeremiah,
Yet, the Christian still believes that all of
these books were inspired by God. Again, a
very paradoxical
situation. The Christian believes that the books of
Joshua
and Jeremiah were inspired by God, but they
were both wrong about
who they thought was the prophet like Moses.
Why is the Christian forced into this position?
Because Luke tells us in Acts
that Peter explicitly
identified Jesus
as the prophet like Moses.
Okay?
Matthew clearly believed that Jesus was the prophet
like Moses as well. Matthew went out of
his way, way out of his way
to present Jesus as being the new Moses.
Matthew even divided his gospel
into 5 discourses
to mimic the Pentateuch,
the Chumash.
Okay?
So that's the that's the Christian dilemma.
Now, what about the pre compositional context?
So we dealt with the compositional context,
okay, which is kind of a big question
mark. We dealt with the,
the
canonical context, and we said, Jeremiah
or Joshua. What about the precompositional
the original context
of 18/18 Deuteronomy?
This is we're kinda coming to a a
climax here. As I said earlier, we don't
know for certain who Moses, peace be upon
him, was talking about. We can only look
at circumstantial evidence.
But first,
even though the prophecy says,
okay, from their brethren,
this does not mean
okay? This does not mean that,
this does not limit the candidates to Israelites.
Okay? Even the d school referred to the
Edomites,
the descendants of Esau,
as being the brethren of the Israelites. They
say that in Deuteronomy 237
because Esau was the brother of Jacob.
Even Bahia, even Pekuda mentions this. So Jacob's
father was
Isaac, and Isaac's brother was Ishmael, and Ishmael
was the ancestor of the prophet Muhammad, salam
alayhi salam.
Ultimately, though, Bahia says that the prophecy
he he he ultimately says that prophecy, that
that prophecy in general is only for Am
Israel,
only for the Jewish people
as is also the resurrection of the dead
according to him. Only Jews
can be prophets and only Jews are resurrected
by God. Right? Such ethnic exclusivity.
The Tanakh and Talmud, however,
mentioned several
non Jewish prophets,
including Adam and Noah, although there is a
difference of opinion whether they're prophets.
Rashi did not consider them prophets.
Many rabbinical authorities did,
and they're they're non Jewish, but also Job,
the prophet Job. Let's not forget Abraham, Lot,
and Isaac.
Not Jewish.
Abraham,
not Jewish.
The Quran says, Abraham was not a Jew
or a Christian.
The first person in the entire Torah who
is explicitly called a prophet, a Nabi, was
Abraham.
And the Jewish people refer to Abraham as
Abraham Avinu,
Abraham
our father, or Abraham our liege lord,
a non Jew.
So prophecy is only for the Jewish people.
While one of the greatest prophets of all
time was not Jewish,
systematic Jewish theologian,
after Islam,
decided that only Jews could be prophets.
Sounds very strange.
But also in Genesis chapter 16 verse 12.
Okay. Genesis 16 12, this is written by
the Yahwehs. This is the J school
about 1,000 BCE.
It says about Ishmael. And by the way,
this verse is highly derogatory about Ishmael,
but it does reveal something interesting as to
how the ancient Israelites
viewed themselves
in relation to the Ishmaelites.
So the end of the verse says about
Ishmael, it's says,
right, That he shall dwell, Ishmael shall dwell
in the presence
of all his brethren.
Or another translation, he shall dwell over against
all his brethren.
Or another translation,
he shall dwell to the east of his
brethren.
And biblical commentators say that brethren here refers
to the Israelites,
that the Yahweh refers to the Israelites
as the brethren of Ishmael
explicitly.
Uh-huh.
And Maimonides refers to the prophet Muhammad. How
do you know the prophet is a descendant
of of of of Ishmael?
Maimonides refers to the prophet Mohammed as a
as a Ishmaeli
in the Mishnah Torah, an Ishmaelite.
This is just something that
is is common knowledge.
Now another thing,
Christians claim that the prophet like Moses
is Jesus, peace be upon him, as we
said, because Luke says this explicitly.
But the
as we would say. So the the the
reason why the Israelites were given the promise
of this prophet like Moses
is actually given in Deuteronomy 18 16.
So 2 verses earlier,
and this reason
completely deflates the Christian claim.
I mean, completely deflates it. So verse 16,
the Israelites cry to Moses and they request
something from him. What do they say? The
Hebrew says it says, lo, oh, safe,
That that let us no longer hear the
voice of the Lord our God.
Okay. And it continues, nor see this great
fire or we will die.
So hearing the voice of the Lord
directly from the Lord
was too much for them.
Yeah. K. Now in verse 17, what does
it say?
It says, and the Lord said to me,
Moses saying, the Lord said to me, they
have spoken well,
or what they said is good,
what they said is right. In other words,
god accepted their request.
Therefore, the next verse says, a prophet I
will raise up for them from the midst
of their brethren
like you, and I'll put my words in
his mouth.
And he will speak to them everything that
I command him. So the prophecy was given
as an acceptance to the prayer of the
Israelites.
So the prophet like Moses
will speak to God face to face like
Moses,
but the Israelites will hear the voice of
the Lord,
the whole Adonai
through him,
through this prophet.
Adonai
will be in his mouth. They will not
hear directly from the Lord.
However, the Christian Jesus is the Lord
according to Christians.
Verses 16 to 18 tell us that the
prophet like Moses is not the Lord.
Explicitly, he is a mouthpiece of the Lord.
That's the whole reason
for the coming of this prophet. So again,
Christians here, they want it both ways. But
they want they want their cake and they
wanna eat it too. They want Jesus to
be the prophet like Moses, but they also
want him to be God. The prophet like
Moses is not God.
Okay? But let's think about Moses for a
moment here. Moses, peace be upon him, I'm
coming down to the end here, was a
Moses, peace be upon him, was a champion
prophet of monotheism.
Okay? He sort of,
like, restored monotheism after there was a falling
away.
He was the founder of a nation, a
religion,
He migrated with his people and God protected
him with miracles during his migration.
He was a father, a husband,
he was the head of state, he was
a warrior, he was a judge, he was
a teacher.
God spoke to him, Hanim al Panim, face
to face, meaning he was beloved to God
and and God gave him his very words.
Right? The ipsissima verba, not just inspiration with
which to form his own words, but God's
very words.
He was given a law code with which
to govern his people.
So everything I just said about Moses also
applies to the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him.
And nobody else
nobody else in history,
what I just said about Moses
can be applied to the prophet Muhammad and
nobody else. In fact, the prophet, peace the
prophet Moses, peace be upon him, what the
prophet Moses did on a small scale, the
prophet of Islam did on a titanic scale.
The prophet Muhammad is the greatest prophet ever.
He's the most successful monotheist of all time.
Hands down. He he he is sent to
all mankind, of course. But whereas Moses was
sent to a particular
tribe and and and pretends to be sent
to
anyone else. So, yeah, he had a global
reach and that is unique. Yeah. Exactly. There
are Muslims who say la ilaha illallah in
every country in the world,
who who live in every country except the
Vatican. He's the prophet of the Abrahamic restoration.
He's the vindicator of Jesus Christ and James
the just. He he refined and universalized
the teachings of the teachings of Moses to
such an exquisite perfection
that it appeals to every race on earth.
He vindicated his ancestor Ishmael, the son of
Abraham,
and he also vindicated, like, the prophet Jacob,
the Israelite prophets,
clearing them of the monstrosities
that were uttered against them by the Israelites
themselves.
Okay? Now now a common Jewish objection
to this Muslim
claim is exactly what Maimonides and Bahia say
in their commentary,
that any prophet who permanently
abrogates any of the 613
commandments of the Torah as a false prophet.
He's a navi sheker. He's not a navi
emet. He's a false prophet, not a true
prophet. But that is exactly what the d
school did. They modified, refined, and permanently abrogated
aspects of the covenant code written a century
earlier.
As I said, this idea that no one
can ever add or delete any laws
has its origins in pre biblical
vassal treaties.
And it was used as a polemical tool
by the d School to condemn to condemn
basically what they believed
their theological and rival,
legal rivals had done.
The authors of Deuteronomy,
right, the d school, wanted their version of
the law to be final
and immutable.
This was a school of law and theology
that was in competition with other schools.
Okay? And there are there are 2 verses
of the Quran I want to quickly just
quote
that give us more clarity, I think, when
it comes to what,
the Quran is doing with the law of
Moses. Okay. So the first one is 4610.
I quoted 46,
sorry, 4612. I quoted 4610
earlier
that the prophet Moses, he bears witness to
one like him. Two verses later,
it says 4612
now,
And in the past before this,
the book of Moses was a guide and
a mercy,
and this book confirms it in the Arabic
language
in order to warn those who do wrong
and give glad tidings to the doers of
good. So that's one verse. The second verse
is 7
145.
Surah Al A'raf verse 145.
So, and we wrote for him,
Moses, in the tablets
an exhortation
concerning all things
and an elaboration
of all things.
So hold fast to them and command your
people to follow the best of them.
Now, in the latter verse,
notice the word tablets is in the plural.
It's not it's not dual.
Alwa.
Right? Not just 2 tablets.
The Quran says at least 3. Some of
the exegetes say 7 or 10 tablets.
Okay? So the verse says that the tablets,
the original law of Moses,
contained an exhortation
and an elaboration
concerning all things, the kul lishe, all things,
everything they needed to know.
So it seems to me that the Quran
is saying that it confirms
all of the,
what's known as the apodictic
laws of the prototype Torah,
the Kitab Musa.
Apodictic
laws are absolute general commands.
Okay? The latter verse commands the Israelites to
apply these principles
in the best way, in the most beautiful
way because as as we know, both the
saint and the terrorist applied to sacred law.
Right? Case law, on the other hand, also
known as casuistic law, scenario law,
is time constrained
but based upon some apodictic principle.
So the last time I checked, we don't
have an ox boring problem.
You know, like the covenant code of Moses,
and and also Deuteronomy, the the code of
Hammurabi.
They have all of these casuistic laws about
goring oxen.
I don't know how many times your your
neighbor's ox has tried to gore you, but
that that's probably not that common. Right?
That specific law Pretty rare these days. Yeah.
Yeah. That that's that's but that specific law
is obsolete. Maybe unless by analogy, it's like
a runaway lawnmower or something, but probably not.
But the principle behind that law,
okay, is transhistorical
and immutable.
So the Quran confirms all of the apodictic
laws of Moses, the original the actual actual
original revelation
given to Moses. The Quran is a mussaddik
in the confirmer in that sense.
But individual,
casuistic
laws or statues,
okay, these are subject to change. They're mutable
because
conditions change over time.
Sacred law is progressive in that sense. Although,
I I know that the word progressive
is a very loaded term nowadays. Today, progressive
means that you believe in endless genders and
made up pronouns. Right? So this assault on
tradition and language and science, but that's what
I'm talking about. I I would contend that
all of the original Torah's apodictic
laws are confirmed in the Quran,
such as, you know, prohibitions against murder,
theft, adultery,
drinking blood, eating pork, *,
but also general prescriptions,
to establish prayer, to fast, to give charity.
Right? That verse at Kitabu Musa. Right? It
said the book of Moses.
Right? It didn't say a Torah or something.
It said the book the actual Torah of
Moses.
Right? So the language here is is very
important.
I would also add that, you know, since
the Quran is the is the final revelation,
it also contains probably a few new universal
laws
that are unique to it, you know, such
as alcohol consumption.
Although perhaps the Kitab Musa, the original law
of Moses, also contained that,
prohibition.
And and then I'll also mention a couple
more verses here. So chapter 26.
This is, chapter 20 Surah 26 verse 196
and 197.
Okay. And I'll and I'll sort of end
with this. It says
that indeed
it or he
it could be the prophet, indeed the prophet
is in the ancient scriptures.
And then it says,
Is it not a sign for them
that the scholars of the Israelites, meaning the
Jews,
knew it as true,
okay, or knew knew him as being a
true prophet. Now now these verses are meccan.
Okay. This is Surah 20 Ashura,
a Meccan Surah.
So the Quran is referring to
the pagans of the Quraysh
saying that
already some Jewish scholars have recognized the prophet
Muhammad.
You see, the Jews in Yathrib, which would
become Medina,
had heard of the prophet,
and many other scholars had converted to Islam
before the prophet even got there, and the
Quraysh knew about this because they were corresponding
with the Jewish community in Yathrib.
And the Quran is saying, isn't that a
sign for you?
So some of this is important. I think
this is very important that some of the
earliest converts to Islam
were learned Jewish men.
This is very important. They did not find
the prophet's,
race or his law,
you know, to be hindrances.
On the contrary, they saw him
as really a fulfillment of prophecy.
Okay.
And that's why they converted.
Now now maybe maybe I'll mention this as
as a as a last point.
There there's
there's one popular
Christian contention
that I think I should probably respond to,
because Christians Christian apologists are always bringing this
up.
So so Christian apologists contend
that the prophet like Moses,
okay,
cannot be the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him,
because the prophet apparently violates Deuteronomy 18/20.
Okay? So so just as I said that
the Christian Jesus, the Christian Jesus, violates Deuteronomy
18 16, Christian apologists will tell me the
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, violates Deuteronomy
1820.
So what does Deuteronomy 1820 say?
It says,
but the prophet who presumes to speak a
word in my name, which I have not
commanded him,
or who speaks in the name of other
gods, that prophet shall die.
Okay?
So what are they talking about with this
verse? They're talking about the story of the
satanic verses.
Right? Right.
Of course, this was a phrase that was
coined by, you know, Scottish orientalist William Muir.
Muslim scholars refer to it as or something
like that.
But but as you know,
Christian Christian apologist, they love this story. Right?
They they think it's the greatest thing
since the tribulations.
Right?
They think they think it's the greatest thing
since sliced sliced bread at holy communion.
That's right. So so as the as the
story goes, and there and there are multiple
contradictory
versions of this story.
Yeah. You know, when when the prophet was
in Mecca, he was reciting Surah Al Najim,
and he recited
Have you not seen these 3, Allat and
Al Ursa and Manat? These were considered to
be goddesses among the
pagans. And then
Satan apparently whispered
2 false verses to the prophet, which he
thought were divine revelation,
Eventually, the prophet, the Muslims,
and all of the idolaters
prostrated.
Word then spread that the prophet had compromised
with the idolaters and everything just sort of
got along. But then Gabriel informed the prophet
of
and those verses were removed from the Quran.
So that's sort of the basic story. Now
Christians,
they point out that this story of the
satanic verses, it must be true because it
fulfills the criterion of embarrassment.
Right? They say, why would a Muslim invent
this story? Why would a Muslim invent a
story that embarrasses the prophet? It must be
true.
So I personally agree with Imam al Razi
about this story. Okay? So Imam al Razi,
he said that this story
not only clashes with the Quran
and the sunnah, but also clashes with reason.
Carl Ernst, who wrote a book called How
to Read the Quran, he's professor
of Islamic Studies at Chapel Hill. He also
rejects the story on strictly historical and literary
grounds. He's not Muslim. A very flimsy basis
for the history. Yeah. But but here's here's
here's my, here's my response.
First of all, the
the criterion of embarrassment is the weakest of
the criteria of modern historiography.
So we shouldn't really overemphasize it. And I
know that, Jonathan Brown, as as you pointed
out,
makes that point, in one of your videos.
He makes that point in his in his
introductory book of about the prophet, peace be
upon him.
Now and why would a Muslim make the
Muslims fabricated
100 and 100 of hadith.
Okay? Ibnu Josie, he actually collected he has
a book called Kitab al Mu'du'at.
Right? The book of fabricated
hadith.
Who fabricated these hadith? Jews?
Christians?
No. Muslims. Muslims in the past foisted lies
upon the prophet. This is a fact. It's
a sad fact, but it's a fact. Why
did they do this? For various reasons. People
wanted to justify their own theological or political
positions. People wanted to justify their immoral behavior
for selfish reasons.
Muslims in positions of power wanted to keep
their power
at at all costs.
Power corrupts.
You know, people had weak faith or no
faith. There have always been hypocrites.
Muslims fabricated hadith that made the prophet look
bad. They made him look like a racist.
At least they tried to do that. They
did this for their own selfish reasons. They
wanted to justify
their practice of chattel slavery, for instance. I
mean, we can flip the tables on the
Christian here, or ask a Christian, who wrote
the Infancy Gospel of Thomas?
And they'll say, heretics. Well, what was their
religion? They were Christian.
Why did the Christian authors of the Infancy
Gospel of Thomas
write
that Jesus as a child
killed another child
and then murdered one of his teachers.
According to the criterion of embarrassment,
this must be true. I mean, why would
a Christian invent the story? Right?
So I think they would get the point.
But but but secondly, in the eyes of
the people who actually fabricated this particular story,
did it really make the profit look bad?
Was it really embarrassing in their eyes? Exactly.
Maybe not. I I I personally don't have
a problem with the one or the other,
but I don't think it's historical because I
understand it's flimsy. But
what it shows is that that God through
through the, angel Gabriel protected
the prophet
from Yeah. Satan satanic attack.
So it actually confirms,
the authenticity of his mission because he was
protected
from Satan. So for me, it's not a
problem either way. Only if you're Exactly. In
it in a tendentious
way to make a political point Yeah. Is
the problem. But there is another way of
looking at it and to see it actually
as a confirmation of the prophethood
because Gabriel intervened and and sorted this out.
Although that was anyway. Yeah. And that's that's
Ibn Taymiyyah's position, and and it's a and
it's a respectable position.
Right? Right. So, yeah, on the contrary, maybe
for the people who invented the story,
the story demonstrated that God rescued the prophet
and the believers
from the vial of from the vials of
the devil.
And the story also had an exegetical purpose.
I mean, it it explained chapter 22 verse
52 of the Quran, this idea that
God cancels out what Satan throws in. So,
there were strong theological
motivations for fabricating the story.
It provided a Saba Bu Nuzul for 22/52
as well as justified this type of intra
Koranic
nazk or abrogation.
So it served a hermeneutical purpose.
So but one might ask, okay, what does
2252
mean then when it says God cancels out
what Satan throws in? Was it
what is it referring to if not the
satanic verses incident? Well, according to Imam al
Razi,
this just means that the prophets are human
beings. They're not angels. They have emotions and
that they are not impervious
to temptation.
Yet with God's help, they are able to
overcome their temptations.
So nasch in this verse is used in
the
linguistic sense of removing or wiping something away,
not in the technical sense of a verse
abrogating another verse.
But even with this said, the story doesn't
make historical sense. It it clashes with reason
and logic. For one thing, it says that
22/52
abrogated
the so called satanic verses.
This is very strange. Why is it strange?
A bit ridiculous
because 22/52
was revealed in Medina
many years later. So were the Muslims praying
to Allat and Al Uzza and Manat for
many years? These false verses were being recited
by the prophet and the companions for 8
years? Of course not. This is nonsense.
Secondly and doctor Shabir Ali, as well as
some of the
study of Quran commentators point this out, that
if the prophet said that it that it
was okay
to pray to these goddesses,
then that would have been the end of
his prophetic career. I mean, he would have
lost all credibility
in in the eyes of both his followers
and enemies.
And we can actually, I think, demonstrate,
what the fabricator of the story did. He
took the historical kernel of this story, and
he altered it in order to give the
appearance of truth.
So there is a hadith in Bukhari that
says the prophet recited Suratul Najam, and then
he prostrated,
and the Muslims prostrated, and the idolaters prostrated.
But it says nothing about
Satan or satanic verses or, you know, these
are the high flying cranes
whose intercession is to be sought. It just
says everyone prostrated.
Okay? So the obvious subtext
is that the idolaters were overcome
with awe at the beauty of the prophet's
recitation,
and so they prostrated when the prophet did.
That's it.
But what about what about textual criticism?
Right? So were these verses really part
of the Quran?
So so textual critics look at both external
and internal evidence. And I'll just give you
a quick example from the New Testament.
Luke 22:44.
Okay? It says, and being in agony,
he, meaning Jesus,
prayed more earnestly,
and his sweat was as if great drops
of blood
falling down on the ground.
When we look at the external evidence that
is the manuscript evidence, the manuscript witnesses
for this verse, we notice that
the earliest manuscripts of Luke do not contain
this verse.
P p 69,
p 75, they don't contain this verse. That's
right.
Internal evidence looks at both the Christology of
Luke as well as Luke's
style and choice of words.
Okay? The Luke in Jesus is basically a
stoic philosopher. I mean, he's always
in control of his emotions.
Ehrman calls him imperturbable.
Right? He can't be bothered
by anything. Even on on route to the
crucifixion,
he's having this lucid conversation with with women,
you know, don't weep for me, weep for
yourselves. There's no cry of dereliction in the
gospel of Luke. There isn't
no, father,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? It's not there, right, even though Luke
had Mark Mark in front of him. And
Luke, you know, father, into your hands, I
commend my spirit. He's always in control. So
Luke 22/44
conflicts
with the Luke and Jesus's personality.
That's one thing. Secondly,
this verse interrupts a chiasm
in the compositional structure of Luke's narrative
Uh-huh. Which is really interesting. Thirdly,
this verse contains multiple hypoxylagominoi,
words that do not appear
anywhere else in Luke's gospel.
So that's a good indicator of a secondhand
writing these verses.
Okay. So both external and internal evidence support
the exclusion of this verse.
And fourthly, I'll I'll add, this verse served
a specific theological purpose.
Luke's gospel was beloved to the Gnostics
like Marcion, many of whom did not believe
that Jesus had an actual physical body.
So this verse was added by the proto
orthodox
to prove
that Jesus did have a physical body. He's
sweating blood.
Right? Now Just just to interrupt there a
second, Bart Ehrman has written
a scholarly work called the Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture.
It's an investigation into the, the ascribal alterations
that were made to
the, the manuscript tradition. And the particular example
you mentioned is certainly discussed in in detail,
and with that very point. If we just
want to,
explore this further, I do recommend by it's
called the Orthodox
corruption of of scripture. It gives many examples
of where later Christian scribes have altered the
text of the new testament,
and we can show this either to further
a more
so called orthodox theology or, other agendas or
adoptionist or or patripassionist, or whatever. So the
text has constantly been fought over by different
scribes throughout the century, so we're altering it
and changing it again and again and again.
Yeah. But but you're right. This is this
is a good example that Bart Ehrman also
brings up. Yeah. But now if we if
we apply yeah. And that's an excellent book,
the Orthodox scripture. And if that proves to
be too robust, then he did, like, a
simpler sort of dummies version of it called,
misquoting Jesus. Sure. Yeah. He also spoke he's
a an academic work. He's, I think, many
of our other scholars, but, yeah, you could
he's readable. You're right. He did a more
popular work called,
I I think as a different type of
American as in the UK, actually. Yeah. Yeah.
So so what if we applied then,
textual criticism to the satanic verses like I
just did to the gospel of Luke? And
I'll I'll end with this.
With respect to external evidence,
there are 0 manuscripts
of the Quran that contain these verses, the
satanic verses. You can count them on no
hands.
There are 0 qira'at of the Quran
that contain these verses. So these verses get
an f. They fail miserably when it comes
to external evidence. Bruce Metzger would give them
an f.
What what about internal evidence?
Do these verses agree with the style and
context and choice of words
and message of the Quran? Absolutely not. There
is nothing more antithetical to the message of
the Quran
than these verses.
Also, there are certain words in these like,
haraniq is that's a haphaxelagominant,
very strange world word. You know, these cranes,
You have this like form 8
passive
verb, latortaja,
which is very strange, also a hypoxalagominant.
So this is clearly not the author of
the Quran. So these verses fail when it
comes to internal evidence as well. So the
final verdict is that the satanic versus story
from a historical
and literary perspective,
does not pass whatsoever. The prophet, peace be
upon him, never spoke in the name of
other gods. He never said anything that God
did not command him to say. And ironically,
in the very same surah,
how does the surah begin? Surah Najm.
The prophet never speaks from his capris, from
his desires.
Everything that he says is revelation.
He is taught by 1
mighty in power.
Okay?
So my final conclusion would be that,
that the best candidate
for for Deuteronomy 1818
is the holy prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi salam,
and I don't think anyone even comes comes
close to him.
No. Oh, that's, that's, absolutely marvelous. I I
I agree. There's a lot of a lot
of detail there, some of which I've not
heard before. I'm,
so pleased to have this on tape,
as a resource,
study tool even where as you say, initially,
people should go away, look up the references,
check them,
and investigate this, further. And as I said
also, if you want a a good general
introduction to,
the questions of biblical interpretation, the,
the documentary hypothesis,
the Deuteronomistic
history, the history of d, the d school
as as it's known. This book will tell
you everything. It's a good introductory text. Christine
Hayes, I'll link to it.
She teaches at Yale, a
colleague of Dale Martin who are who are
having on again in a week or 2.
I've read bits of it. It's very readable,
accessible,
which is why they published it. So,
and also, next week, talking of satanic verses,
doctor Shabir Akhtar, who's an academic at the
University of
Oxford. He's a a towering theologian and philosopher.
He's gonna appear next Tuesday on blogging theology
talking about, guess what, the satanic verses. But
not the one not the ones that we're
talking about. The, the notorious,
so called novel by Salman Rushdie, the British
writer, and, doctor,
Sheba Akhtar will be talking about,
secularism,
freedom of speech,
and the way that Mohammed, the the man
is is,
seen as a, you know, you can
insult him and degrade him in the name
of free speech,
and the implications of this satanic versus novel,
in UK,
literary history. And I know it's perhaps not
had any big impact in the states, but
for, the British audience,
I know Shabir Akhtar, and he's an outstanding
intellect,
and, I'm sure he'll be very interesting. So
that's a a short, advert for next time.
But coming back to today, thank you so
much,
professor
Ali, Atay, and, for your outstanding,
introduction to these issues. Such a,
a poly god. Yeah. So certainly who is
a person who can,
operate on so many different registers linguistically
and through various ancient texts, the Bible, the
Quran, and so on. And this it's it's
a real treat to have this kind of
holistic synthesized,
exposition of the issues rather than some someone
who's narrowly focused on just one field. You
you are clear expert on many fields, and
is that kind of multidisciplinary
approach we really need when we're talking with
Christians and and Jews and Muslims together about
all these texts. So,
outstanding,
work there. Thank you so much, sir, for
your Thank you. Help. And,
you you you even,
you might come again to talk about other
text like, Isaiah 42,
which is another key key text
in the Bible much,
discussed today. Countless YouTube videos about it. Very
good to have,
a a scholarly,
assessment of the evidence. Really, what does it
say? And, I think it's a very strong
candidate myself
for,
the the prophets,
of of Islam. I'll put it that way.
I rather strong candidate for that,
passage.
Thank you. Is there anything else you wanted
to say, sir, before we
conclude? Thank you. Thank you for having me,
and, you know, I,
again, I, encourage people to,
subscribe to the channel.
And this is
this is,
this is what it's all about. Right? It's
it's it's God talk. It's theology.
May God continue to bless you, Paul, and,
looking forward to coming back.
Thank you so much. Good to have you,
but you're very welcome. And I I know
there are many, many people who will watch
this,
and and will will it benefit from the
norm. I know from your last time you
were, on blogging theology, the huge
positive,
and almost ecstatic,
response that people had to what you were
saying. I was quite quite overwhelmed by it.
So, I'm sure that'd be the same. And,
anyway, thank you very much. I'll I'll end
it there. I think it's been 2 hours,
but,
it went by very quickly. So thank you
very much indeed. Thank you,
Paul. Take care.